I'll be updating the list with TAR 17 in the next few days as I have time. If anything like that needs to be fixed, I'll address it then.

With a new puppy to watch over and having to rearrange some things because of the blizzard this past weekend, I haven't been able to work on that, and I'd rather make sure I'm wide awake and clear headed.

Looking at the list again, i just realized that Tammy and Victor had such good averages and it didn't once occur to me that they're that competitive!! I guess the impression that they screw up Leg 3 still lingers in my head more..

Logged

"The Amazing Race shows the best and worst out of you. But if only negative things are shown, then it's probably you. - Jobby"

If T/V had WON Leg 3 rather than placing 8th, they'd be the highest-ranked team thus far, with a 1.67. If they'd placed 2nd or 3rd, they would be 2nd, ahead of Meghan/Cheyne, as they would if you threw out Leg 3 altogether. If they'd placed 4th, they would be TIED for 2nd with Meghan/Cheyne.

T/v recovered well from their communication difficulties in Leg 3, and their competitiveness does kind of sneak up on you. I don't recall them making any major goofs beyond that leg.

I'm projecting the last two placements for leg 4 because of the TBC, but I feel confident that I've those two right. But consider those two tentative for now, although it would not affect the trendline for the first four legs that much.Leaderboard Trends After 4 Legs:

Jet-Cord, who started slowly in their original season and then picked up steam, once again started slowly this season, and are again generating a rapid rise in their placement average.Zev-Justin are dropping quickly after a strong start.Gary-Mallory and Margie-Luke are slowly gaining ground. (G-M might be described as "stable.")The Globetrotters started well but are now in a dropping trendline.Hard to say whether the trendlines for Ron-Christina and Kent-Vxysen are slowly rising on merit or because there are fewer teams. They are bringing up the rear, though, especially Kent-Vxysen.

The trends that we saw after the previous leg continued after this last leg. Jet and Cord now have the second-best average placement of the season to date, similar to how they performed in their first season, and we're at the half-way point (6 legs of 12.) Gary and Mallory are also improving week by week in their placement average, but they did better in the first leg than Jet and Cord.Ron and Christina and Kent and Vxyzen's average placements are improving slowly because of the presence of fewer teams on each of the last two legs. But they clearly are bringing up the rear of the remaining teams. The placement averages of the other three remaining teams are falling slowly and these three seem to be moving as a pack.

There was some minor shuffling among the three teams whose average placements are closely bunched together, while one of the two poorly performing teams was eliminated.

I'm still considering trying to compute the final placement ranges for those teams that are left once we get past the final non-elimination pitstop, but it would be too complicated to try to do it before then. Not to mention that the final two legs are being aired the same night, which means we'll have to deal with projecting at least four teams no matter what.

Anyhow here are the averages for the TAR:UB teams through leg 7 of 12:

Basically the value of the movement in placement points up or down (slowly would be well less than one placement, rapidly would be clearly more than one placement point; it can be hard to quantify if teams are bouncing up one week and down the next, so that can influence the characterization. Stable usually means a very narrow range of movemene over the course of the three leg placements being used.

Obviously with the final teo legs airing back-to-back next week, there won't be an updated interim average after 11 legs, just the final result for the season that will be used to update the main list. I can tell you that except for the Trotters, the other teams can end the season with the best placement average overall. The worse any of those three teams can complete the season is with a 3.7500 placement average; the best is a 3.0000 average.

The rankings are now updated to including the final average placements for the teams that returned for TAR:Unfinished Business (season 18). Some interesting tidbits in the final averages. With the exception of the winners, none of the teams came within one placement of their average from their original season. The best performing team, Gary and Mallory, came in third. The last place team, Kris and Amanda, have the best performance average of any last place team ever; probably due to the fact that the first leg was an NEL. I'm sure there some other interesting statistics there, but thaose were the ones I noticed in updating the main list in the first post. (And yes, I can now correctly state than in the first ten years of TAR, not counting any regional editions elsewhere, there have been 378 Racers.)

Time to prepare for the in-season ranking tracking updates for season 19.

Something to note -- with season 19, we have now had 400 people run the Race at least once. I'll let someone else figure out how many cities and miles that represents. but it has got to be enough to go to the Moon and back several times over.

I expect to start this after episode 2 or 3, depending on how those Race legs are structured (i.e., normal legs, NEL legs, no rest period pit stop legs, what have you.)

I'll be compiling and organizing the information over the next couple of days, now that my notebook is back. It's very difficult to do this using a tablet, especially since I can't use my Word Perfect files.